This week on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is always a key stop for presidential candidates; does the Affordable Care Act burden the free exercise of religion; and they represent rebirth and the gladness of the resurrection.

Amidst the clashes over Jewish values that took place during this week’s annual meeting of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, one rabbi tried to find common ground: “America and Israel are built upon values: B’tzelem Elohim, everyone is created in the image of God; kavod ...

“We Little Sisters of the Poor are a group of women who made religious vows to God. Now we find ourselves in a situation where the government is requiring us to make changes in our religious health care plan to include services that really violate our deepest held religious beliefs as Little ...

Easter becomes “a very thin, generic festival,” says author Rev. Fleming Rutledge, without “looking into the grave and then saying we rejoice with the risen Christ.” Only then, she says, can flowers “give us the gladness that comes with the unrepeatable quality of the resurrection.”

After almost 20 years of distinctive coverage of religion on mainstream television, this is the final episode of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Correspondent Kim Lawton looks back at some of the many changes she has covered in the American religious … More →

“Across the US and around the world, I’ve witnessed the many ways people worship, express their spirituality, seek the sacred, and build community. The perseverance of faith and hope, even in the most difficult circumstances, continues to inspire me.”

“I see it all the time,” says Father Michael Doyle, a Roman Catholic priest in Camden, New Jersey, “a beauty that’s deep and wonderful and sometimes tragic, but beauty absolutely, I do. Their faces are there with their burdens and their wrinkles and their difficulties and so forth, but ...

After almost 20 years of distinctive coverage of religion on mainstream television, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly is coming to an end. In its last two episodes, the series looks back at some of its most memorable reports and interviews. This … More →

“What makes me a believer,” says writer Frederick Buechner, “is that from time to time, going back almost as far as my memory will go back, there have been glimpses I had, sometimes literally a glimpse, which have made me suspect the presence of something extraordinary and beyond the realm of ...

“In the last 20 years,” says correspondent Tim O’Brien, “we’ve seen five vacancies on the Supreme Court and changing attitudes on a wide range of social issues. Times do change, and so do the justices. For better or worse, what the Constitution really means would seem to have changed over ...

“Many of my stories have concerned human suffering,” says correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro, “and one of the most effective ways to tell these is through the work of social innovators and entrepreneurs, many driven by deep faith.”

“I think the purpose of the monastic life in the modern world is to show that we don’t need a purpose,” says Brother Paul Quenon of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. “The purpose of life is life, and you are to be just to be. Everybody measures their importance by how useful they are. That’s ...

Conflict Resolution in Public Schools; In the Footsteps of Mother Teresa; Perspective on Syrian Refugees: Imam Omar Suleiman

Kansas classrooms are using mediation skills and restorative justice circles to resolve conflicts peacefully; Catholic seminarians travel from Minnesota to Calcutta to serve the poor and suffering the way Mother Teresa did; and a Texas imam visits Syrian refugee camps … More →

“Conflict is a part of human experience,” says Wichita West High School psychologist Janet Fox Peterson, “and teaching about speaking and listening is so very critical, and we’re not working on that very much as a society.”

The sisters don't go out and try to fix the society,” says seminarian Peter Ludwig. “They really embrace the culture that they're in, find people, the absolute poorest of the poor. It's what's so different about Mother Teresa. She doesn't go and try to fix all the problems in the world. She goes ...